LONG LIVE BRIDGET JONES

Renee Zellweger Thinks a Third Bridget Jones Movie Sounds “Fun”

Earlier this month we were crushed to learn that Hugh Grant had dropped out of the third Bridget Jones movie. (Sure, it had been so long since we had heard an update about the third film in the Renee Zellweger–led relationship franchise that we had forgotten another movie was even in the works. But still: we were crushed!) And now, Zellweger—Bridget Jones herself—has surfaced to comment on the future of her beloved character.

E!’s Marc Malkin spotted the actress on Sunday at the ALS Walk in Los Angeles, and asked her what she thought of portraying the Helen Fielding character for a third time. “It would be fun,” she said.

Let those four words of cautious optimism sink in and resonate. Because when pressed for more information, Zellweger did not have much else to add. Maintaining that she is in the dark about the progress of the project, she continued, “I'm not being cagey. I just don't know.”

Zellweger’s other Bridget Jones co-star Colin Firth offered up his own two cents on the long-gestating project recently. During press rounds this summer, Firth joked, “the way it’s going, you might be seeing Bridget Jones’s granddaughter’s story being told by the time we get there.”

Although Fielding’s third book, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, received rave reviews last year, the script for the next film has reportedly been a point of contention for its cast members. “The book’s excellent, by the way,” Grant admitted recently, “but the script is completely different—well, the script as I last saw it a few years ago.”

In another interview, Grant confessed that he personally invested himself in the third Bridget Jones script.

“I’m always quite difficult,” Grant added, “but I was really impossible on this one. And there was a lot of coming and going about the script and my part. To begin with, I was not convinced that [my character] Daniel Cleaver could ever go into television, a medium he despises. But I got my head around that and did a lot of work on just sort of trying to keep the cleverness of Daniel.”

Grant may not have been able to fix the script, but several outlets including BBC and The Sun now report that Emma Thompson has been brought onboard to attempt to salvage the script, and in effect, the third Bridget Jones film.